British and American lexicography. Main types of English dictionaries

Lexicography is the science and practice of compiling dictionaries and describing them.

All dictionaries are traditionally divided into encyclopedic and linguistic dictionaries.

Encyclopedic dictionaries are thing-book, that deal with concept reflecting different objects and phenomena, their relationships and so on.

Linguistic dictionaries are word-books. they list word of the language and give other linguistic facts. Besides these two types now there exists the so-called cultural dictionaries. They combine their information of two types both encyclopedic and linguistic dictionaries.

Linguistic dictionaries can be uni-lingual or explanatory and by-lingual or translation.

In the first one explanations are given in one language and the second one in a different/other language.

Dictionaries are also divided diachronic and synchronic.

The diachronic shows the history of the word and reflects its development up to the present moment.

One of the most famous dictionaries is the OED 13 volumes.

Synchronic dictionaries are disrupted dictionary. They show either the present day meaning and usage of words or those meaning which the words had at a certain historical period.

There are general and special dictionaries. General represent the vocabulary as a whole. Special dictionaries cover a specific part of the vocabulary; There are synonyms and antonyms, dictionaries of neologism and slang, pronouncing and so on.

There are glossaries and concordances. Glossaries explain term or difficult words, may be archaism, different branches of knowledge.

Concordances record the complete vocabulary of some author. EG: there are concordances to the works of W. Shakespeare.

And finally there are ideographic dictionaries and thesaurus. These dictionary group words according to the concepts expressed. They supply a word or words by which a given idea may be expressed.

Task of lexicology: systematization of the lexicon. Lexicology and lexicography are different in the degree of systematization of the lexicon.

Lexicology and lexicography have the same subject of study.

The biggest dictionaries

1. 1. Oxford Engl. Dict.

2. 2. Webster’s

Diachronic historic. dictionary

3. oxford university press

4. oxford engl. dict.

5. short oxford dict.

Synchronic dict.

6. 1.concies oxf. dict

7. oxford advanced learners dict

8. pocket oxford dict.

Monolingual dict.

9. Oxf. dict of new words

10. Oxf dict of collocations

11. Oxf dict of English ethymology

12. Oxford – Russian dict

13. PUBLISHING HOUSES

14. Oxford, Collins, Longman, Chambers, Cambridge.

American lexicology

There are 3 main dict.: Webster’s 3^rd new intonation dict. Of the English lang., Webster’s college dict., American heritage dict., Phunk and Wognals dict.

Dictionary typology

1. Encyclopedic dict.(Britanic, Word Encyclopidia)

2. Linguistic dict. – general dict. (the word list is not restricted)- restricted dict./ specialized dict.

Monolingual (mainly explanatory)/ bilingual (translation dict., but cont. explonation)/multiling.

Synchronic dict / diachronic dict

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